I have forsaken Christmas cards, Christmas SMS’s and emails, even Christmas presents themselves. I am a veritable Scrooge as I hasten into my dotage. My one concession to communication with the congregation is this vaguely annual newsletter. To be perfectly honest, it’s a record for myself of what the heck I did in the last year, but I do allow others to read it too. Consider yourself blessed, or, more probably, afflicted.
I think I will write this in reverse time order, with most recent events first. In this way, as we delve ever deeper into the less and less relevant past, you can just stop reading and say “Who the heck is this guy who keeps sending me stuff?”
The biggest news of the last week is that I finally FINISHED my book after 10 years of writing. For 10 years you could confidently expect 1,000 pages, but actually it is just somewhat more than 100. Of course, the book has been stolen twice (or rather, the computer on which it resided), restarted, forgotten, changed, abandoned. Anyway, the book is called “Consent to Life”, it has a very strong libertarian theme, and I finally quite enjoyed writing it. I am publishing it via a brilliant American website called Lulu.com. You can order a copy from me for R75, including surface postage, or you can order it direct from the website at http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/consent-to-life/14622373, for $10 plus about $3 postage or download a copy for $4. Sorry, no refunds if it is not what you expected.
On the 4th of December I celebrated my 60th birthday by hiring a local restaurant and singer, and inviting all my friends in J Bay along. I was especially delighted that Meg and Bonny and Rob flew down just for the weekend, to be at the party and to make some great speeches. Been a good year for speeches. The singer was a local guy from St Francis called Sam Mieny. I heard him singing Leonard Cohen and Cat Stevens in the local shopping mall, and thought they were actually playing the originals. After chatting to him for awhile I got the idea to have a party at which he would sing the old favourites from my youth, which he did. Amazingly, Meg gave me a beautiful video of Leonard Cohen on his 2009 world tour, at the age of 80, so he is also a favourite from my present.
Dylan and his girlfriend Kayleigh, Meg and her boyfriend Dave, and Linda’s aunt Erica all stayed with us at some time or other over the Christmas period. We had a wonderful time, the house was way full, the food and drink flowed, and volleyball was played at every possible occasion. Gotta love it!
Of course, the BIG news of 2010 was Bonny and Rob’s wedding on 18th September at Oxbow Country Lodge near Bronkhorstspruit. That other soccer thing in 2010 paled into insignificance by comparison. It was an absolutely wonderful day, the weather perfect, the venue stunning, and the bride beautiful. Bonny and Rob organised the whole thing themselves, which lead to some exciting moments along the way, but the final result was worth all the effort. Photos can be viewed at http://picasaweb.google.com/108919701918672194909/BonAndRobWedding?feat=email#, and at http://picasaweb.google.com/110711608278519022806/BonnyWedding?authkey=Gv1sRgCNj-m_Dxs97Nbg#
Linda and I had a few exciting moments on the way to the venue when we got into an argument with one of Gauteng’s finest, a thick-as-a-brick traffic cop. He spotted the DA sticker on my truck, then wandered around the vehicle muttering “I must fine you, I must fine you.” Since the tires weren’t in bad nick, he decided the crack in the windscreen was a problem, and fined us R500. Fortunately, getting robbed by crooks in Gauteng is nothing new, so we just took it in our stride.
We drove up to Gauteng the week prior to the wedding, stayed with Meg for 2 days, then moved to Rob and Bon’s new house in Bryanston. It is lovely, unusual, huge, comfortable. Although expensive, it also provides them with a good income from a cottage, and both Bon and Rob hope to work from home in time. Unfortunately, the heavy rains in Gauteng have led to the flat roof leaking, and they are having to get that repaired.
Rob had his bachelor party on the Saturday before the wedding. It was held at this inflatable adventure park just off the M1 highway in Sloane Street. The place has inflatable climbing walls, inflatable trapeze swings, inflatable castle ramparts on which you duel with inflatable boxing gloves, and many more. In theory everyone had to compete against Rob on all the toys. Predictably, Rob won just about every encounter – he’s the original energiser bunny. After rolling down hills in giant plastic balls, we all repaired to the Wits University beach volleyball court, where the highlight was watching Ron win a game of volleyball while wearing diving flippers. Rob’s friends went to a huge amount of trouble, even making a video question and answer game, where Rob had to guess Bonny’s answers to various questions, then got to watch her actual answers. All great fun.
I helped organise the sport at this year’s Shell Festival in Jeffreys Bay. The festival is an annual event, designed mainly to attract visitors to the town during the September school holidays. I setup a website for the festival at http://shellfest.wordpress.com/, if anyone is interested. The really cool thing is that I was able to get R18,000 worth of sponsorship for the 7 sporting codes involved, including volleyball. I ran 3 tournaments over the 3 day long weekend, with good entries from Port Elizabeth and NMMU (PE University) making the trip, and several worthwhile prizes (R2000 for the first placed mens team). I managed to bag a 6 month gym membership for myself, and a trip to the Elephant Sanctuary near Knysna for Linda and I and friends. Once there, we communed with various pachyderms, then had a superb lunch at Enrico’s on Keurboomstrand.
I continue to be heavily involved in organising local volleyball – this seems to be my divine mission in life. I have now setup volleyball facilities at 5 different venues down here, not counting the beach nets I setup and dismantle every Sunday. By great good fortune we were offered the use of a large empty shop with a very high roof in the local Fountains Mall, where we played for free for most of 2010. Towards the end of the year I sent off an email to the council requesting the use of the Newton Hall, the main social facility in J Bay. To my complete surprise they agreed to allow us to use it, at no cost. After fitting protection on the neon tubes (a major exercise involving high scaffolding and much sweat), we now have a pretty good, full sized venue for volleyball at long last.
Our local volleyball took a huge knock when Garth and Anisa Taft emigrated to Oregon in the USA. Garth was one of our best local players and an excellent coach, with strong ties in the Humansdorp community. They have been sorely missed.
I coached volleyball at the local primary school in the course of the year. Initially we had a huge and chaotic crowd of young girls, but finally trimmed this down to a reasonable number. A schoolteacher at Pellsrus Primary takes an interest in volleyball. He contacted me to ask if I could organise trials for school volleyball for the Kouga district. I had done this several times in Gauteng, and understood the challenges (identifying and remembering the 12 best players in various age groups in the space of about 2 hours from a crowd of hundreds). We setup courts, registered players, appointed adjudicators, and waited for the late schools to finally arrive. It all went well, and 12 hugely excited girls were selected for the provincial trials to be held in East London in a weeks time. Everything always gets done at the last minute in sports organisation in South Africa. The schoolteacher assured me that he could arrange transport to and accommodation in East London at no cost, using his provincial school contacts. Foolishly, I took him at his word. We arranged the many permissions for young girls to travel 300km and stay overnight. Finally, amidst huge excitement and girlish shrieks, we all stood outside the school at 12 waiting for the bus to show up. After an hour of waiting, I contacted the Pellsrus teacher. Unbelievably, he hadn’t actually confirmed the bus yet. So began an unbearably frustrating afternoon of negotiation, begging, threatening and swearing at various officials all over the Eastern Cape. Finally, the girls’ school teachers cancelled the whole show at about 4pm. The bus finally left at 5.30pm, almost empty. I was depressed for weeks.
Linda continues to be in two minds about the move to Jeffreys Bay. She misses the kids and her friends and work in Johburg, and has battled to replace all that down here. She visits the 2 horses on the farm outside J Bay every morning, and often rides in the veld there. While her Reiki business has done well, having trained a number of local people, the Tai Chi classes dropped off at the end of 2010 due to various illnesses amongst the class members. I have managed to persuade Linda to get her own email address, which she looks at about once a week. The address is lindaw999@gmail.com, if you wish to communicate with her directly.
Linda continues to attract stray birds to her like fleas to a dog. During spring she hand-reared a total of 8 baby swallows which had been blown from their nests. Four of these flew off into the wild blue yonder, with a bit of coaching, and four didn’t make it. It’s quite a sight to see a baby bird with no prior experience or training suddenly flap its wings and soar into the sky. Angela Perkel, alias Drover, aka Sophia Yourhen continues to rule the roost, literally. The little day old chick we discovered near Gamtoos Mouth a year ago is now probably the world’s biggest chicken. She is immense. She attracts neighbouring planets. Angie, the elderly and irritating cock-atiel thinks she is beautiful, and regular bonks the middle of her back. It looks like a midget humping a feather mattress. Muisie the mousebird hates Angie almost as much as I do, and this tiny scrap of elderly feathered fluff regularly beats the crap out of him. Finally, we have Daisy dove with the broken wing, and the other dove, Baby, who just decided life in a cage was easier and safer.
Dylan decided to fly down to Jeffreys Bay over the Easter long weekend along with his girlfriend Kayleigh, and a fellow pilot and friend, Adam Harris (son of Jim Harris, my longtime libertarian friend who died last year). The plan was to leave early on Good Friday, refuelling at Bloemfontein and PE before landing at the little airstripnear us in Paradise Beach. Predictably, their start was delayed until about 12pm. At about 3pm I received an SMS asking me to meet them at PE, as Paradise Beach had no lights, and it would be dark by the time they got there. I drove up to PE, and went to watch the volleyball at the Splash Festival, while waiting for them to arrive. I will never forget sitting on the beachfront watching the clouds scudding across the sky in a 40 knot gale, thinking that there was no way they could land a little Cessna in this violent weather. Significantly, no commercial planes were landing at PE airport either. Finally I got a very apologetic SMS from Dylan saying that PE airport had been closed and they were turning back to either Middelburg or Bloemfontein. After a very intense debate in the plane as to whether Middelburg had landing lights or not (I discovered by chance just this last weekend that Middelburg does NOT have lights), they finally decided to press on to Bloemfontein, in the dark, through several storm systems, with just a handheld, battery powered GPS, and almost no night flying experience at all. Kayleigh sat quietly in the back listening to music, trying to ignore the arguments going on between the pilots. Linda and I were frantic with worry. I was fairly certain if they had not landed and contacted us by about 9.30pm, then they must be out of fuel. I started trying to look up emergency aviation numbers on the internet (incredibly difficult to find). Finally, at about 10pm we got a call from Dylan saying they had landed at Bloem with less than a jerrycan of fuel left on board, and all was well. Sheesh, and you wonder why I’m bald and grey!
Later in the year, around July, Dylan moved from Lanseria Flight Centre to 43 Air School Advanced Training, also at Lanseria. This seems to have been a step-up in terms of responsibility and prestige, if not in salary. He works really hard, but does get things like a company Blackberry. He is now completing his civil aviation licence, hopefully by the end of 2011. Dylan plays volleyball for Quantum, one of the top clubs in Johannesburg. They managed to win the VSA Cup this year, with Dylan on the team. Very cool.
Meg and Dave went for a stroll around Annapurna in the Himalayas in April. It was quite a long stroll, as it took 2 weeks, and went up as high as Everest Base Camp, through some magnificent scenery. To see their 1000 photos, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/izzypzee/AnnapurnaCircuit#. Its worth the visit. Meg continues to do well at Gordon Institute of Business Science, and now manages leadership development programmes for a portfolio of clients. She still keeps in occasional contact with Edward de Bono, flying down to Cape Town to visit him in the latter part of the year. She has also just registered for a challenging business course with Stellenbosch University, which will keep her busy for a year or two.
In February Bonny and Rob went on a trip through India. Despite insane taxi drivers, suicidal bus trips, vast heat and great congestion, they both loved the trip and had a good time. I think their theory was that if you can survive India together, you can survive anything together. Bonny continues to work at Aquavision as a producer, although she is not terribly happy there any longer. She is considering becoming a freelance producer/writer/editor and working from home. One of her films, The Last Lioness of Liuwa, went on circuit in 2010 to great popular acclaim. She had many amazing comments on her show when it aired on NatGeo and Sky in July.
During my visit to Johburg in September I attended a libertarian dinner attended by about 15 old and some new friends. It was great to meet the old familiar faces, and viewpoints. I have missed the Johburg libdins, despite having had a few Jeffreys Bay equivalents. The libertarians seem to have fallen into disarray, perhaps as a result of Jim’s death last year, perhaps due to other interests. The libsa discussion forum has slowly tailed away to nothing. The new Libertarian Society blog at http://libsa.wordpress.com/ has received no support from most of the community, not a single article has been contributed other than by me. The libertarian philosophy is important to me, I have devoted a lot of time and energy to it over the years, and I am sad to see it shrivel and die for no obvious reason. Still, that’s what you get for trying to herd cats.
During 2010 I became increasingly disillusioned with my participation in the Democratic Alliance in Jeffreys Bay. As a libertarian I dislike and distrust politics at the best of times. Every time I get involved in a political party (which has been quite often), I always end up regretting it. This time has been no exception. I got quite excited about working as a ward committee member in my local municipal ward. I set up a website (www.kougaw8.org) , organised meetings, went to budget and development discussions. However, the local DA hierarchy disapproved of ward committees, probably because they are meant to be apolitical, and ensured that they did not succeed. My fellow committee members were, by and large, elderly and very conservative, and generally did not approve of this soutie trying to change things. After having a public meeting explicitly cancelled by the local DA councillor, I decided to give up on both the ward committee and the DA. I recorded my reasons on my own blog (http://sketchesbyboz37.blogspot.com/) if anyone is interested. I still support the DA, believe that they are doing a great job in the Western Cape, but also believe that they will never be a part of an ultimate solution for the puzzle that is South Africa.
During the year I read a blog about a website called Ushahidi. During the Kenyan presidential election in 2008 the election monitors found that they could not keep up with the flow of election incident reports flowing in from all sources. An enterprising NGO setup a website to organise these reports, and the concept of crowdsourcing was born. Ushahidi means “witness” in Swahili. After the earthquake in Haiti, the aid agencies had the same problem dealing with all the requests for help pouring in. An interesting wrinkle is that aid agencies tend to hoard requests for help, and not to share them, since their income depends on how many people they have assisted, in most cases. The same folk deployed their Ushahidi software in Haiti, where it made a huge difference and became world famous. Using their software my friend Andre Bruton and I setup the http://www.gotcha.org.za/ blog and website to record incidents of crime in Jeffreys Bay (and on the west Rand). It seemed like a good idea at the time, but has largely failed due to a general lack of interest, probably due to a lack of marketing (although I did try quite hard). I get about 10 hits per day from spammers, and about 1 per month from J Bay residents. The idea has since been taken over by other, bigger websites such as www.mobilitate.co.za, to whom I shall probably concede defeat quite soon.
So what of the future. For my official predictions, go to http://libsa.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/2010-predictions/#comments, and perhaps add some of your own. I think that
- high inflation is inevitable after a huge money printing binge,
- many more countries, states, banks and businesses will have to go to the wall before this current financial crisis is over
- the dollar will be superseded as the world reserve currency
- China will emerge stronger and the West weaker from this crisis, leading to democratic reform in China, and mild chaos in America and many western nations
- The average man-in-the-street will be screwed by inflation and taxes, again
- South Africa will continue its slow, steady decline into poverty and despair
- Australia and New Zealand will suffer a major natural disaster
- Life will go on, except when it doesn’t
I guess that’s about it. Well done, if you have read this far. Hope all my predictions are wrong and that you have a wonderful 2011.
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